


the last straw

by gamblignant8



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 23:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20882267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamblignant8/pseuds/gamblignant8
Summary: Roxy Lalonde is getting tired of playing errand girl for an old billionaire.





	the last straw

A sunbeam peeks in from the curtains of your sparse and cluttered bedroom and assaults your vision even through your closed eyes. You scowl and roll over in bed and see a blinking light on your pager. No respite for you, you reach over for it.

Fucking hell, your head. Your name is ROXY LALONDE, and you hate mornings after you've been drinking. Which is every morning.

Anyone who would judge you for having a few drinks to take the edge off after a day of graduate research, babysitting an old man's discarded kids, and setting up an apocalypse-proof lab is a BITCH, and that's just facts.

You roll out of bed and pick up the pager before meandering over to the kitchen to start the coffee machine. It's the old man, as usual.

Jake Harley, billionaire adventurer, has been your mentor since you were young. Why he picked you, you don't know. But he gave your adopted parents – the Lalondes – as much money as they needed to send you to the most expensive private schools. In return, you've become a dramatically overqualified all-purpose gofer.

He hasn't been back to New York in years. You're practically raising the kids he left. But you screw the top on your travel mug and groggily drive over to the post office, ready for whatever nonsense he's got for you today.

Last time, he sent you half a ruined enrichment centrifuge and no instructions for assembly. It took you three months and made your dissertation late. This had better be good. You fumble with the keys to the PO box, open it, and find only a slip of paper to retreive the package from further back. You sit, wait in line, and think about the old man.

_Next!_ He's thrown his entire life, all of his wealth, and any hope of being a decent father away in pursuit of the truth about Skaia. And you were raised searching for it, too. Next! Scattered across the world are lives his patronage (or parentage) have touched. Are you truly obsessed with the apocalyptic truth, or did you inherit it from him?

_Next!_ You think about the strange machinist with the puppets. The sister he never told you about. The Batterwitch.

_Ma'am, we can help you now._ You bring the slip up to the desk, and the woman says she'll have to wheel it out. Just what your hungover ass needs, heavy lifting. You go around the side and see a cart coming out with...a fifty-pound bag of manure.

Scrawled on it in smudged sharpie, it says, "MAKE SURE THE BACK GARDEN GETS FERTILIZED, THANKS."

* * *

Hours later, thousands of miles away, an open bag of fertilizer appearifies right on top of an old man's head as he hacks away at undergrowth with a machete. Stapled to it is a note in pink ink.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Twitter request: "pls do b1 roxy rebelling against/escaping from her abusive mentor jake harley"


End file.
